Interaction design

I read many reviews about the book ‘designing for interaction’ of Dan Saffer so I had high expectations of reading the book. Here I will share my opinions after reading the book.

Dan Saffer has tried to give an overview of interaction design in which he partly succeeded. He describes what interaction design is about and introduces some design basics, research and typical interaction design methods such as personas, storyboards or use cases. The advantage of the book is that it gives an overview of what interaction design is about, but unfortunately always stays on a superficial level. Other authors have written books and books about personas while Dan Saffer does it in five pages. This is my main negative point, because Dan Saffer created overview he also lost focus, don’t expect to be able to put methods or tools in the book into practice. For that everything has been described in a too general level.

Positive points

He describes what interaction design is and In the book Dan Saffer gives a lot of examples that underline the points he is making. This makes it easy to read and understand.

Another positive point are the stories of people that put interaction design into practice in a business environment. They shed new light on how interaction design is put into practice and why it is important to them and their business.

Negative points

Assuming that most designers (either web or industrial) have enjoyed higher education one might expect references throughout the book. Unfortunately references are rare which makes it hard to make solid claims. Most claims are based on common sense and if you read them you take them for granted, but if you want to read more about it you would like to see references. A true disappointment.

As mentioned before, the book never exceeds an introduction or general descriptive level. Further reading is necessary if you would like to apply any of the methods or research described in his book.

Conclusion

If you are a professional in the field of interaction design or studying interaction design the book will  not add much too your knowledge. Most of the tools and design processes discussed are common practice. I think the basics of interaction design are discussed but never leaves the level of basics unfortunately. If you are new however to the field of interaction design this book is a good introduction. The book describes the history of interaction design, approaches to interaction design, basic methods and superficially touches upon some interaction design methods such as personas, storyboards and use cases etc. But professionals it does not add anything!